|REVIEW| Book Review: The Fault In Our Stars (SPOILER ALERT)

I know. I know. This is an old book published in January 2012 blah blah blah. But as lazy as I am, I have only started reading her (she sounds like a girl to me) recently and finished her two nights ago (well, technically it was last morning).

To be fair, I didn't pick her because I love romantic novels or admire John Green (sorry mate) or anything. The sole reason I got my hands on her (that sounds a bit weird to me, to you?) was just because I wanted to see how big the difference would be when she is portrayed on the silver screen. Alas, I hated (you can never hate yourself too long) myself for that. Why? Because all I was doing during the movie was
spotting the differences. However, that was actually quite a fun game to play to eradicate boredom. If you get what I mean.

p.s. no tears shed. 

OKAY, OKAY.

Back to the book.

*SPOILER ALERT* (If there's anyone who's even less updated than me)

Cancer is the main thread in the book. This horrible uncatchable killer gets the characters tied together in an entangled mess of colourful threads and creates the love of the century. 

Truthfully, I was taken aback when I found out about that because before that all I understood about the novel was everything but medically based. I just love reading all those medical terms, hmm, you know why. With the background and some little words here and there, I stayed with the novel. 

from forums.studentdoctor.net

She features a very simple love story between these two teenagers whom one of them has had a touch of cancer and the other living with it. Quite a typical tale I would say, except with the slow life and death moments involved, the plot is weaved with some elements of... thriller, I guess?

Not to be evil, but the book would be excruciatingly painfully boring (to me) if there isn't some death (forgive me if that seems too cold blooded to you). Having Hazel (like the death god's daughter in Percy Jackson, irony) almost dead once and Augustus (Gus) dying, the story is made interesting and readable.

"SO HOW ABOUT THE ROMANCE? ARE YOU TOTALLY BLIND AND EMOTIONLESS?"

Okay, okay.

Their love tale does have some eye-catching elements. Frankly, I like how Gus treats Hazel. The way he read her favourite book and shared her interest immediately, the way he brought her to the park just to let her know he'd used his only wish on her just so that she could meet the jerk far away in Amsterdam, cancer perk maybe? Probably, but it is still undeniably lovely and if it's really the cancer, I would say cancer opened him up.

Lastly, the metaphor about smoking. It seems meaningless to me in the book. Okay, I get that you think deep and all but, maybe I'm not understanding it well but what does it have to do with them? They couldn't control the cancer, they could fight but they couldn't stop it from killing them. The power of letting it kill or not wasn't even at all in their hands!

Okay, I'm getting hyper. Let me cool down a bit.

From proprofs.com

So yeah? Even more ridiculously, Gus had wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes by almost killing himself. Alright, the independence part makes sense, but just for that metaphor? COME ON. Of so many things he could use to prove himself capable of independence (obviously he couldn't be) he chose that freaking pack of cigarettes.

If I were to rate the book out of 10, I would give it a 6. It is not so bad, but not so good. Love story and cancer, a very common combination but John Green knows how to intensify the love and that makes it an above-average book. My advice is read it only if you have plenty of extra time. :)

Thank you for reading, see you in the next post!